The idea to "choke" P2P into "extinction"?

[Saudade]

Ok, 1st of all, this thread is NOT a discussion about whether P2P/filesharing is good/bad, whether it helps/harms the industry, whether it is best to embrace/fight it.

For those who agree that P2P should be "eliminated" (no matter how much that sounds like the futile equivalent of wanting to make roaches extinct...), I just thought of an idea.

I'd always believed that wanting to "share" is part of human nature. But I also believe that the willingness for Person A to share something with Person B STOPS when it actually costs Person A to share it, and doesn't cost Person B to take it at all. Especially when it costs him significantly.

So, what if all the governments sign a treaty to impose a tariff on "upload" bandwidth of all ISPs under their jurisdiction? That in turn will cause the ISPs to impose a fee on upload bandwidth of its users. For example, the standard ADSL broadband pricing will have an additional charge per MB of traffic "uploaded". They can still have a maximum quota of free upload traffic per month, say 20 MB, so users can still use it for basic uploading of pictures etc to their blogs etc...

Beyond that quota, if the ISPs make it cost prohibitive enough, users will realise that everytime they leave a file in their "shared folder", they are losing valuable upload bandwidth when other P2P users download chunks from them. Soon everyone will put less and less files for sharing to save costs.

So the only people left that still want to act as "servers" will be those dedicated people like the old Pirate Bay. Their bandwidth bills will explode and it will be very easy to track them down for enforcement purposes.

Then we might see a scenario whereby, sure, you can download all you want, but provided you can find a source who is willing to upload for you. Sure you can still upload all you want, provided you pay for it.

Still a very democratic approach, not a hardline banning, secret policing or sueing random Grandmothers. Rather, it is using the rules of economics to control P2P.

Maybe the govts can even cut out a percentage of this collected upload bandwidth tariffs and distribute them to rights collection agencies/societies to benefit the artists.

Would this idea work?

[Sqye]

..

this does not support our current model of GLOBAL capitalism...

look at what's happened in china...and india -
two countries that are taking capitalism to the NEXT F&CKING LEVEL.

what's the percentage of current illegal media content in distribution in china -
80%?? or some rough equivalent?

what we're dealing with here are large greedy international companies,
who are more than HAPPY to give away large quantities of content,
in order to attach their name brand to it...( obviously, in the form of advertising )....

...to audiences in the high 100s of millions who are happy to get free content,
made by musicians, film makers, and software designers,
many of whom are more than happy to work for free....

young, hungry and bored with a pc (and tons of cracked apps )...

the damage has already been done - nobody's looking back - only forward -
there are servers packed with catalogs in every format sitting in people's homes,
dorms, and offices all over the world.

and everyone's got at least a few "friends" with these servers...

portable HDs with 1,000,000s of files are being shared by teens and college students globally...

these insignificant little publicity stunts by moguls and high position administrators like iovine,
will continue to earn them ( iovine, et al. ) their corner offices, and additional tax shelters in the caribbean,
but will not advance the cause for struggling artists, or potential new markets...

..so, call me stupid, but i don't think this would work..

..

[Tone Obsessed]

Originally Posted by Sqye

..

this does not support our current model of GLOBAL capitalism...

look at what's happened in china...and india -
two countries that are about to take capitalism to the NEXT F&CKING LEVEL.

what's the percentage of illegal content in china - 80%?? or some rough equivalent?

what we're dealing with here are large greedy international companies,
who are more than HAPPY to give away large quantities of content,
in order to attach their name brand to it...( obviously, in the form of advertising )....

to audiences of billions who are happy to get free content,
made by musicians, many of whom are more than happy to work for free....

..so, call me stupid, but i don't think this would work..

..

Agreed. This would never work not to mention the legal issues an imposed practice such as this would raise.

Further, practically speaking, can you imagine what it would take to manage those assets, rights and access? And with "rogue" nations, it would be moot - the only people that would suffer are the US ISP's and Americans.

TJ

[biggator6]

and clearly very little understanding of how networks work...

first off - lets forget all the legitimate uses for 'uploading'... like software developers, and anyone who works from home or a remote office. SO - would you take a branch office for 'uploading' to corporate headquarters? How about the guy who's telecommuting - tax him? How about outbound email - that's 'uploading' too.

Now - about the whole concept of taxing 'upload' bandwidth.. it only makes sense (and not much at that) in the concept of a home user, sitting on an asynchronous line - something that ISPs have artificially pushed to save themselves some money..

You realize that every time you click on a web page (like, gearslutz, for instance) - the server is sending packets of data to you... you may be downloading the webpage.. but the server has to send it. Would that get taxed?

Back to the drawing board.
"-)

[gsilbers]

the idea is interesting but not on the upload side.

i do think there should be a 3rd party involved. and they should be paying the artists. computer and tech companies.
most copmanies that sell balnk cds and recorders are also part owners of the distribution companies /labels.
and labels are just really bad banks trhat lend money based on the taste of a 20 year olds A&R and forgive debt if albums dont sell.,
and artist just spend to much time and money on albums when most good musicians can record really hard stuff really fast.
i think evolution is going to work its wonders with the current music busness.

[treymonfauntre]

who do you think sets the fees for bandwidth in the first place? its cheaper than ever right now and its still more than it should be.

[dlmorley]

Many artists use P2P to share (or allow sharing) live gigs and outtakes as they don't agree with the concept of making money out of every fart an artist does.

I think this is a good thing.

I think you end up with the same argument concerning internet porn. The internet is bad because you can get porn on it.

P2P is bad because you can get illegal stuff from it.
My local market sells CD's for €3. Bootlegs I'm sure. Let's close markets.

[joeq]

I upload whole albums in .wav format onto my website for clients to come and grab the latest recall of their mix; or for the mastering engineer to pick up; up or for a radio station to get my half of an interview. This is their music, no one else has access to it, but it IS an upload and my "20 MB" doesn't even get me one song a month.

I uploaded a 500+ MB zip file back in February. I made a mistake in the file and had to do it again. Not even counting the other songs and projects I went over a Gigabyte in one day.

I email photos to my family and friends at a resolution that runs a meg per photo. That's an upload too. I upload a photo or two to gearsltuz as well.

I am all for artists getting their royalties, but I am not the one breaking the law. Why should my legitimate uploads be taxed in this way?

Increasing the bandwidth per person to a more reasonable level will just push it into a realm where anyone who wants share tiny little MP3s will be able to do so with ease.

File sharing is an important issue, but one that is clearly superceded by the wider concerns of being able to use the internet for the zillions of other things that people use the internet for.

It would be like giving everyone an allotment of 20 phone calls a month, because some drug dealers use telephones to conduct their illegal business.

[u b k]

Originally Posted by Saudade

Still a very democratic approach...

placing the burden on ISP's to protect the fiduciary interests of a small subset of entertainment providers and the corporations that back them, using government mandates?

that doesn't seem democratic, it seems autocratic.

governments can't control behavior. they can influence it, but they can't control it. an individual's conscience, tailored by the context of their life situation, is the ultimate (and sole) arbiter of a person's choices.


gregoire
del
ubk
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[Sqye]

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nice posts, guys..

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[Bassmankr]

It would just shift to downloading only with the storage server being in a country that didn't sign the agreement (look at how online gambling has just moved to where it's legal). Putting a fee on uploads would only hurt the inocent, like the people who upload photos or movies for the rest of the family to see. Downloading bandwidth is only gonna increase/be cheaper from competition as the video providers are pushing that delivery method and it has to be fast/cheap/easy enough for people to use or they won't bother. ISP's don't care about the morals of what is going through them (porn for example), they sell bandwidth and do whatever they are regulated to do as far as policing. Noble effort but it looks like you are spitting into the wind.

[dpianomn]

Originally Posted by u b k

placing the burden on ISP's...

exactly. you can't ask private companies to become law enforcement officers. aside from it not being fair and honest, the cost to the ISP's to track, manage and bill would likely be outrageous.

[Saudade]

yeah it did come across my mind that we all do need to upload legitimate things. Yes, and I know I have very little knowledge of how networks function. But perhaps there is a way (technically) for the ISPs to distinguish between upload traffic that are using P2P protocols and Instant Message (IM) protocols versus those that are not (like FTP, email client etc)? Sorry if I sound like an idiot, I am just throwing out questions like a layman

But regarding your viewpoints that it is not correct to "burden the ISPs" to enforce, I must say I disagree. Broadband internet grew rapidly because of porn AND P2P. So how can an ISP say it is "not their problem", now that we have bred a new generation of "consumers" that want to pay $0 per song/movie? Besides, I think the ISPs would be more than willing to incur the additional costs of these "enforcement" actions, because these costs will be meagre compared to the additional $$$ they would be earning for the upload traffic on top of their users's subscription payment.

And regarding the issue of servers moving to "rogue nations", I think this argument is quite flawed. Look at what happened to the Russian site Allofmp3.com. All they needed to suffocate them was for VISA and MASTERCARD to block payment to them. The fact is with all the economic muscle that you Americans and the G7 (and WTO) wield, there can never be really a government rogue and stupid enough to provide refuge for these openly illegitimate activities. The fact is, most of the developing nations in this world are nothing more than an "economic colony" of the richer nations

Whatever it is, I believe that the industry would have to confront head-on the problem of "free vs fee" content sooner or later. Everyone knows we can never go back to physical media like CDs anymore no matter how we wish we could. Music and media will be distributed in digital form almost exclusively, in one form or another, and the only question left is HOW we can get the creators paid, so that it can stay an economically feasible and even vibrant and creative industry.

And I suspect that ISPs will have a huge role to play in finding a solution that can benefit music consumers, artists and even the ISPs themselves.

Thanks guys for your impassioned input to this thread....